Explosive grenades are designed to cause fragmentation of most or all of their parts, including the housing and the fuze body, so as to inflict maximum damage on a person who is nearby when the device explodes.
More recently, a class of grenades have been designed that are variously known as stun grenades, or flash-bang devices. These devices are not intended to cause physical harm, but rather are intended to temporarily stun a person with a loud sound, a bright flash, and a pressure wave. Such devices are intended to be activated near the person and thus must not fragment or they could cause serious harm to the person.
Many of these less lethal devices use carry-over parts from fragmentation grenades, simply replacing the explosive charge with a different charge. One part that has to date been carried over, without change, is the fuze body. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,654,523, the entire disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference, describes a stun grenade that includes a grenade body having a plurality of vents on one end, adjacent to a fuze body that supports the fuze of the device. The fuze body includes portions that support the release lever of the device. The outlet vents of the grenade body direct some of the byproducts onto the fuze body wings. The force that is transmitted into the fuze body by the explosion byproducts can undesirably cause the fuze head to separate, or the fuze body otherwise to fragment, consequences that could undesirably result in injury to a nearby person. The present invention addresses this problem.